


If Not Now, When?

by BitterlyAlice



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:42:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29882688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BitterlyAlice/pseuds/BitterlyAlice
Summary: In the midst of the Battle of Hogwarts, an exhausted, injured Hermione finds herself thrown back in time to the end of the First Wizarding War.  Stuck there and believing that Harry (in her own timeline) has died in the forest and that all is lost, she decides to change history by taking action in the past: by tracking down and destroying the Horcruxes alone.Instead she must reckon with a companion - a guilt-stricken and grieving Severus Snape.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 24
Kudos: 109





	1. Chapter 1

When the knock – sharp and singular – comes at the door Albus Dumbledore regards it with a calm surprise. It is a moment before he gets to his feet, crosses the office room and answers it.  


“Severus,” he says.  


The other man sails past him to stand near the fire, silent and dripping. He has not bothered to vanish the rain from his clothes or the mud from his boots, and leaves a trail of each across the floor. “I thought,” he says to the fire, “that it would be some years before you called upon me, not days. I thought...I thought there would be time.”  


Severus Snape looks like a thing dug up from beneath a river rock, his hair gleaming in the firelight, face wet and full of agony.  


Albus frowns. He is opening his mouth to respond when there is another, softer knock at the door. He turns to open it again, and Remus Lupin is there.  


Lupin too has been crying. His cheeks are red, as if fevered, and he enters very slowly, moves to stand by the large desk. “I got your note,” he says to Albus, and then sits down, not seeming to notice or care that there is nothing to sit on. A wave of Albus’s hand and a long bench appears just behind him, in time to break his descent. Another wave and somewhere in the depths of the office a kettle begins to whistle.  


Snape is staring blankly at Lupin, but when the man meets his eyes, that blankness twists into horror. There is a cavernous space between them. Only a Griffindor would be foolish enough to throw himself at it, and sure enough: Lupin is opening his mouth already.  


“Severus,” the other man says. It is clearly an effort to speak. “I know you cared for Lily.”  


Severus stands up. His next move is not clear, but he looks like a man who wishes to run. An invisible hand bears down on his shoulder.  


“Sit, please,” Albus says gently. The kettle swoops over and pours tea into the four cups waiting on his desk. “I think we are about to have a visitor.”  


Severus sits. Two of the teas dose themselves with milk and sugar, one of which flies to Lupin. The other makes a delicate hop to land at Dumbledore’s left elbow. The third cup hovers uncertainly for a moment before forgoeing fixing. It swoops to Severus, who takes it without seeming to realize he is doing so. They all regard the fourth cup.  


“What is this about, Albus?” Remus says. “Is it Sirius? I haven’t gone to see him, and I don’t...I don’t think I can. Please understand that.”  


“No.” Dumbledore is looking at the fourth cup. “I did not send you a note, Remus. Nor did I send word to Severus.”  


Into the silence that follows this statement, a woman’s voice, small and determined and somewhat muffled, sounds from the corner of the room.  


“I did.”  


It is a testament to the exhaustion in the room that although both Severus and Remus point their wands in the direction of the disembodied voice, neither of them stands or casts. Dumbledore does not so much as reach for his own wand. His hands remain serenely folded on his lap.  


“Please come out from under that cloak,” he says.  


A woman unfolds from the empty space next to Dumbledore’s foe glass, draping a bit of silvery fabric over one arm. At the sight of it, Remus _does_ stand up, looking thunderous, and is stalled by Dumbledore’s raised hand.  


“Yes,” the woman says to both of them. “It _is_ that cloak. But it’s also not. Two sugars, please. And cream if it isn’t too much trouble.”  


She is very thin. The chaos of her hair – only partially contained by the tie she’s wrestled it back into – only serves to highlight the hollows under her cheekbones, and the dark circles under each eye. There are cuts on her face that do not seem to have properly healed – one bleeds sluggishly down her collar. Her hands are scraped, blistered. She addresses her requests to the teapot on Dumbledore’s desk, and the fourth cup of tea doctors itself according to her words, and sails towards her. She places it on the bench the headmaster has summoned, and sways gently. Remus moves to steady her, but she takes a step back. Her eyes look fevered.  


“You are ill,” Albus tells her. He looks intently into those eyes, and she laughs and raises a shaky right hand to shield them.  


“I’m very tired,” she says. “As I imagine you all are. But I’m not so tired that I’ve forgotten my Occlumency lessons, sir. I’ll tell you who I am, but you’re going to make me some assurances first.”  


Albus eyes have not left hers, but the other two men are looking at her left hand, which is hidden by the cloak.  


“Before you get anything out of us,” Remus says, and his voice is steely, “You are going to tell me where you acquired that cloak. It belongs to James Potter.” And here the steeliness breaks, and he has to pause. The pauses stretches until a sob escapes him and he drops his head into his hands.  


There are tears in the woman’s eyes as well.  


“Remus,” she says, “I didn’t know James, but I promise you I would never steal from his family. Please believe that this cloak was given to me by someone who has a right to give it. Sir,” (this addressed to Dumbledore) “I believe I’m right in thinking that you have the Potters’ cloak here in your office?”  


Dumbledore’s eyebrows leap up towards his hairline. Remus turns to look at him.  


“Albus,” he says. “Why...”  


“It’s alright,” the woman says. “James loaned it to him. It was bad timing, but the headmaster didn’t know they’d be needing it. Sir, I’m going to need you to examine this cloak, please.”  


Severus is still watching her hidden hand. When she tosses the silvery cloak onto the headmaster’s desk and he sees that it is empty, he relaxes almost imperceptibely.  


Albus reaches underneath his desk and pulls out another cloak, the same silvery fluid material, and places it carefully on the opposite end from the first. They do not touch. At last he pulls out his wand, frowning, and waves it across the two. When he looks up his eyebrows are still comically high.  


“They are the same,” he says. “But the one you have brought is displaced in time. So far displaced in time that...” he trails off.  


“Thank you,” she says. “That’s all I needed. It’s a long story, and one that I’m going to share parts of, but first I’ve brought you some presents. As a display of goodwill, if you like. That’s why it’s taken me a few days to get here – I went back to right after Halloween, but...well. I’ll be taking out my wand, so please don’t attack me.”  


She reaches into a small moleskin pouch on her belt, mutters a quiet “ _Accio_ ” and pulls out three objects, which she places on the floor one at a time, without drama.  


A silver locket, a delicate tiara, and a small metal cage containing a live rat.  


Remus and Albus leap to their feet.  


“Is that - ” Remus’s voice falters. “But he’s dead,” he says finally. He cannot take his eyes off the cage.  


Albus’s eyes are fixed elsewhere; he has not even looked at the rat. “Where did you get that locket?” he asks.  


“Does anyone care,” Severus says flatly, sounding not at all as if he does, “That we are looking at the lost diadem of Ravenclaw?”  


“Firstly,” the woman says, “Yes. That is who you think it is, Remus.” She points her wand at the rat, which twitches twice and then erupts, breaking the cage, into a small, round man who twitches in his sleep. One hand is crusted over with blood. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking at it, “But I didn’t want to waste my dittany on him.” She shifts her gaze to Remus and her voice gentles. “They changed Secret-Keepers,” she says. “I’ll wake him up so you can question him under veritisirum, but I think you know what he’ll say. Sirius is innocent.”  


She turns her gaze to Albus, whose wand is trained on the other two objects. “You’ll know better than me how to destroy these, sir,” she says. “But we had some luck with Basilisk fangs the first time round. Speaking of which, if you’re in the market: there is actually a Chamber of Secrets beneath this school, and there’s a massive bloody snake down there.”  


At this she looks contemplatively down at her cup of tea, bends to pick it up, sways dangerously, and manages to say, “Oh. Oh _fuck,_ ” before crumpling gracelessly to the ground.  


The three men stare at her.  


To everyone’s surprise, especially his own, it is Severus Snape who moves first. He walks to her body and crouches beside it, picks up one limp wrist and feels for a pulse. As he does so, her sleeve falls away and they see the raised, weeping scabs of the word carved into her forearm.  


Severus drops her wrist. It falls heavily onto the floor, and then he is gone, leaning into the corner of the room and retching sourly against the stone.  


Remus kneels gently in front of the woman then. He is crying freely, but waves his wand above her prone body in a complex, rolling motion, like that of a wave. A net of purple light hovers around her, parts of it glowing brighter than others. Remus regards it.  


“She is exhausted,” he says at last. “Malnourished and magically depleted and deprived of sleep. She is also burned and cut, has two cracked ribs and a torn ligament in one leg, but she isn’t dying. Albus, who is she?”  


But Albus Dumbledore is still staring at the objects the mysterious woman placed on the floor, and he does not answer.


	2. Chapter 2

_Her hand in Ginny’s hair is wrong._

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_They are in the Great Hall, the smell of too much duelling – electricity and smoke and the sharp high note of blood – all around them. Hermione knows that if she looks away from her hand, from the slow carding of it through Ginny’s tangled hair, she will see Fred again, and Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks, and Lavender Brown for god’s sake: silly, frivolous Lavender who used to make fun of Hermione’s sensible knickers, all of them lying dead under the vast, starry expanse of ceiling, and so she doesn’t look away. Focuses on easing her fingers through the snarls as gently as she can, ignores the trembling of her wrist (Fred’s blood is on her left shoe, she’s been walking in his blood since she helped drag Percy from his body), ignores the sounds Ginny is making. Most of them aren’t words, anyway._

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_But her hand is wrong._

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_It’s her left hand; Ron is holding the right, his grip as strong and certain as if he is the one comforting her, but that’s not the problem._

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_“Ron,” she says._

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_And then Hermione can’t breathe, because they have been so stupid. Because the problem with her hand is that it’s_ her _hand, and when she looks up, finally properly looks up to see why_ she’s _the one stroking Ginny’s hair, when_ Harry _was right behind them, Harry is gone._

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_Of course he’s gone._

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_Hermione lets out a strangled, choking noise, and Ginny looks up at her, looks up and sees her face and understands, and then they are on their feet together, frantically scanning the hall._

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_“What’s wrong?” Ron asks, just a little too slow, and the thought flashes into Hermione’s mind that she will never forgive him this slowness any more than she will ever forgive herself. “Hermione, what?” and she sees it occur to him, sees his head swivel to sweep the crowd. “Where’s Harry?”_

.....................

Her chest does not hurt.

It’s such a strange feeling that she immediately tenses, and when that movement doesn’t result in pain, Hermione opens her eyes. She gropes for her wand and relaxes a little when it rests warmly against her palm.

“Good morning,” comes a familiar voice. “I have healed the worst of your injuries, but you are in need of a great deal of rest. And some breakfast, I think, if you are able to sit.”

She is crying before the last words escape him, and when she struggles to sit up, warm and steady hands grip her shoulders. She sags into them, aware that the headmaster is trying to prop her against the pillows but unable to care. She falls into his arms and rests her face against his shoulder. 

Hermione is not sure what she’s crying about, exactly. Partly it is that both of his hands are strong and sure and _alive_. Partly it is everything that has happened in the last days and weeks – the deaths she’s seen, the friends she couldn’t save, the unforgivable mistakes she’s made and the complicated grief of this opportunity, this _responsibility_ she now has to fix it all. To stop it from happening. She is so tired. 

She cries into Albus Dumbedore’s shoulder for a helpless time, and when she draws back there are tears in his eyes as well. Feeling somewhat hysterical, she clutches the front of his robes. 

“You don’t know me, Sir,” she says. “I mean...even later, you won’t really know me. But you trusted me to fight in the war for you, and I did. I did everything, everything I could,” but she chokes on her words. Remembers her lapse of judgment in the Great Hall and is ashamed. 

Hermione pushes back against the pillows, draws in a breath for strength, and lets go of her once and future headmaster, though he keeps hold of one of her shoulders. She sops at her face with one sleeve, which is filthy.

“I’m done now,” she says steadily. “I won’t do that again.” She means two things: the crying and the war. There is a better way, and she is going to find it. He’s going to help her.

“How did you come to be here?” Dumbledore asks. 

It is an innocent enough question, but Hermione feels her back stiffen. “Where are Remus and Professor Snape?” she asks. 

There is a long pause during which she can feel his eyes – still kindly, no doubt, but calculating – on her. Hermione does not meet them, and finally he lets go of her shoulder, stands up and walks to the fireplace. 

It was not an easy decision, coming to Hogwarts after finding herself so unceremoniously flung into the far past. Hermione has not forgiven the headmaster, is in fact quite furious with him, but she does understand the choices he made. And she needs him, needs his wisdom and his experience and his information – just like he needs hers. The trick here, she knows, will be convincing him to work with her, not to use her. And she is not above playing a little dirty to make that happen.

They are in his office still, Hermione lying on a low bed that looks as if it was transfigured from a bench. Pale sunlight is beginning to creep through the high, round window above his desk, and across the floor. The quilt on her lap is a familiar red and gold. She runs a finger along the edge. 

“I’ve spent seven years sleeping under blankets like this,” she says. “I begged Professor McGonagall to let me take one home after my first year, and I still have it. You think you’re an adult, you make all these awful adult decisions, and then you realize: you’ve never even bought your own blankets.” She stretches her legs carefully, waiting for the stab of pain, but there is only a little stiffness. “You’ve spent your whole life running and fighting and surviving.”

“You are very young,” Professor Dumbledore says, sounding troubled. 

Hermione looks up, meets his eyes at last, and they are as tired as her own. As guilty. She wants to let him off the hook, wants to say that she’s of age, that she knew what she was getting into, but...Devil’s Snare and two-headed dogs and teenage battles with Death Eaters all vie for attention in her memory, and she knows she was a child for most of it. She cannot take this guilt away from him any more than he can take hers.

“Yes,” she tells him.

“Old enough, however,” Professor Dumbledore says in his tired, troubled voice, “to know that those who lead wars can seldom be trusted.”

She nods. “Which is why I won’t talk to you alone, Sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to call them back.”

The circle of yellow sunlight from the window encompasses Hermione now, but stops just short of Dumbledore’s feet. He clasps his hands behind his back and looks down at it contemplatively. 

“I do not know yet,” he says, “what plans I might set in motion to win this second war of which we have been speaking. I do not know yet what terrible things I might ask of you, whoever you are, or from those who have already fought and lost so much.”

“I know,” Hermione whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“I do know,” he continues, “that those plans may depend upon the careful stewardship of information. Released too soon, or to the wrong people, certain knowledge – ” 

“Have you destroyed the horcruxes I gave you?” Hermione interrupts. It is something Harry (and her heart constricts at the thought of him) would usually say. Despite everything she’s been through, Hermione’s palms still sweat at the thought of interrupting a teacher. But Harry is dead, and she has to take control of this situation. She cannot be that girl any longer, the one who defers to authority and trusts her elders. “Because if you have,” she says, “things have already changed. Your plans will have to change. If you’re committed to following the original...the original timeline, I suppose, you’ll ask me to put the locket and the diadem back where I got them, and we’ll put fifteen years and countless deaths between us and their destruction.” She is terrified that this is what he will do, wonders if she can get away with refusing. “But if you’ve taken care of them,” she says, forging on, “which I think you have because you aren’t a monster, Sir, then you’ve already acknowledged that this isn’t normal time travel – ministry sanctioned, no more than twenty-four hours, controlled and understood and...and...neat and tidy. That it can’t be. That it’s is an opportunity to do so, so much better than the plans you’ve been making.” Hermione doesn’t want to cry again, so she stops, swallows hard. “Besides,” she says, “Professor Snape _saw_ the horcruxes. He’s going to work some things out. It’s too late to keep him in the dark. So. Did you destroy them?”

Silence. Then, sighing, Professor Dumbledore sweeps one arm gracefully through the patch of sunlight to indicate something that sits on the surface of his desk. A glass dome, sparkling with magic, under which there is only a pile of ash. 

Relief, cool and soothing as a healing charm, sweeps over her. “You used Fiendfyre?” Hermione asks. 

“Indeed,” Professor Dumbledore says. He sighs again, and then caves. “Remus,” he tells her, “is at this moment overseeing Sirius Black’s release from Azkaban. In the light of all that has happened, I think they will wish for some time alone together. Is it possible you might be satisfied only with Severus?”

Hermione hesitates, then nods. “Severus will do,” she says. 

They are silent while Dumbledore casts his patronus, sends it sailing gracefully out of the window with its message. 

“Will you have tea?” He asks when it’s done. “And breakfast?”

“Not until he gets here,” she says. And then, because he is still the wisest, most powerful wizard in the world and she is still Hermione, she says, “I hope this isn’t a mistake, Sir. I’m sorry if it is.”

His smile, despite everything he’s done, despite the headache Hermione knows she’s causing him, is so, so kind. 

“You will learn to live with that fear,” he tells her.

And so they sit together in companionable guilt and fear, until the young potions professor arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some things I realized while writing this chapter:  
> 1\. Dumbledore is smarter than me, which makes him difficult to write. I’m not sure how much of his “Harry destroys the horcruxes and sacrifices himself,” plan is solid in his mind at this point in time. My guess is that he’s worked out a fair bit of it, but hasn’t yet given up on finding a better way, which leaves him open to Hermione’s pleading here.  
> Also, though, Hermione and Severus are smarter than me, too. What have I done?  
> 2\. Time travel is complicated and I am going to have to play fast and loose with some details to make this work, y’all. You’ve been warned!


	3. Chapter 3

Transfiguration is not Severus Snape’s specialty, but that doesn’t mean he cannot excel there, provided he concentrates.

The object he chooses is not important; it changes every night. Tonight it is a (beautiful, impractical) set of porcelain scales. They were a gift from Lucius, of course. It’s meant to be a sideways insult – because of the whiff of commercialism that hangs above the act of weighing and measuring. Lucius himself always brewed with too heavy a hand, as if it was parsimonious to level a measuring spoon or add the precise quarter ounce of dragon dung for which a recipe called, rather than a liberal half ounce. Only Lucius Malfoy would think it important to be extravagant with dragon dung. 

It had been an absurd way to approach potions, and the resulting explosions had led, after several years of bad grades and embarrassment, to Lucius requiring the services of a much-younger tutor in the subject. 

Severus had been that tutor. 

It occurs to him for the hundredth time as he floats the scales into the middle of the room, that if not for that tutoring – for the careful offering and withholding of flattery, praise and acknowledgement that stemmed from it – Severus might not have fallen in with the Death Eaters at all. 

He flicks his wand and the scales begin to grow. He breathes carefully: in through the nose, out through the mouth, and concentrates first on form – elongating the slender spine, shaping the pretty white baskets into the palms of hands. Fingers sprout from them like new branches. Focus is key, he knows. He does not let those hands distract him even when, bracing himself, he directs the gold plating to loop itself around the base of one slender finger. The ring is an ugly, braided gold, and Severus wonders if it ever bothered her, scratched her skin or pinched. 

The face is more difficult. There is no green on the scales, despite Lucius’s fondness for Slytherin colours, and so Severus has to close his own eyes to picture hers, and he can feel the spell stutter in the air before him, try to collapse in on itself as his heart clenches. He breathes carefully. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It stabilizes. 

When he opens his eyes a porcelain woman stands in the middle of the room, and she is watching him. A sweep of Severus’s wand and her skin flushes pink, and it is too much. 

“Evans,” he says. He breathes. Careful. In. Out. 

She smiles at him. It is her distracted smile, the one she gives when she’s thinking very hard about some finicky bit of wandwork or a potions problem. It is a smile that captivates him just the same as it always has, concentration be damned. 

“It’s Potter now,” she tells him, and her voice flows like water through the cracks in him, just the same as it always has. Now, one week after her death, Severus feels her voice prising him apart. He falls heavily to his knees.

The spell is pulsing like a messy heartbeat. He’s about to lose his grip on it and she’s hardly spoken. It is worse than yesterday. It is no progress at all. He breathes. But he can’t breathe. Lily can. She breathes until Severus thinks it might kill him and he doesn’t care that it’s not getting easier, doesn’t care that any idiot looking at him, let along a powerful Legilimens, could read his emotions easily. 

Severus flicks his wand in a harsh, uncontrolled movement, ready for this exercise to be over. The figure is blown backwards in a flash of green light (not as vivid as the real thing), lies crumpled and unmoving on the floor, her eyes still open. Her skin is as white as porcelain. 

Severus drops his wand. He crawls forward on the stone floor until he is level with her, with the arm she has flung out as if to protect herself. He looks. 

It is his punishment and his practice, to look at her like this. This is the seventh time he has coaxed Lily’s image to life, the seventh time he has spoken with her, watched her die. He will do it every day until it kills him. That, or the Dark Lord returns and Severus can look him in the eye and hear her name, see her face in his mind, and feel nothing. Until he can be the perfect spy. The perfect weapon.

He rather hopes it kills him. 

The spell is not stable. Lily’s form has begun to blur and flicker as his concentration slips, as rage and grief threaten to tear him apart. The ring is gone. Her face is more like it was at Hogwarts – younger, kinder. She is wearing dress robes, then a pretty muggle dress, then her old school tie. Her arm is stretched towards him. 

A jar on his apothecary shelf explodes. Caster oil and glass everywhere. Another. Infusion of moondew drips into powdered nightshade and the room fills with a pale glow, and Severus hears the noise he is making, the shameful, cowardly retching as he tries to swallow his sobs but cannot. Cannot. Sparks shoot from his discarded wand – a profusion of sparks, as if he is eleven years old again. They bounce in a fountain off the stone floor and Severus knows he will never be able to contain this. No matter how many years go by, no matter how much he breathes. The thought of Lily Evans will shred through his control just the same. Just the same as it always has.

Then her arm is changing. Just at the breaking point of the spell, just as he can feel it shaking apart in front of him, Severus sees the word carve itself into the meat of her forearm. 

_Mudblood._

The wound isn’t hers – it belongs to the girl upstairs with Dumbledore – but it might as well be. He remembers the way he spat it at Lily, the way he wanted it to _hurt_. It hurts now. Her arm is bleeding. And then it isn’t any longer. Isn’t bleeding, isn’t an arm. Lily’s graceful hands shrink back into porcelain baskets and he is sobbing over a piece of potions equipment. 

Severus can hear the drip of oils and tinctures behind him, the odd hiss and fizzle as they mix with one another in the shattered wreck of his apothecary shelf. Lucius was right, of course: Severus’s careful measuring of ingredients didn’t only stem from a love of precision. He’s a stingy bastard even now that he doesn’t have to count every knut, and even in this moment, even consumed with grief and horror and guilt and rage, part of his mind is lamenting that ruined shelf, wondering what, if anything, can be salvaged. 

“Sometimes you act like people aren’t real. Like they’re not as important as your experiments,” he remembers Lily telling him once, and she was right too. He can’t blame Lucius or the Dark Lord for the things he’s done; there is something poisonous and vile inside him. There always has been. 

His wand is too far away, so Severus picks up the beautiful set of scales with one shaking hand and heaves it as hard as he can into the fireplace. It shatters. 

Then he peels himself off the damp dungeon floor and gets to work, hating himself as he does it. He vanishes the black slurry of oil that has been creeping across the floor, then sets about drying and purifying the array of powders and plants that are not too damaged. His whole body aches. 

He is still hard at work when the phoenix patronus soars through the wall and summons him back upstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than the others - I'm planning for them to get longer as I start having, you know, Actual Plot Occurrences instead of just angsty character development. I’ll probably switch between their perspectives a fair bit.  
> Please also note that I do realize I've made Lucius and Severus only a few years apart, rather than the canonical six or seven years. No, I don't have a good reason. I just liked the idea of Severus tutoring him.  
> Also, these coping mechanisms of his? Not remotely healthy.


End file.
